Developers Say They Warned Apple About Maps Issues In iOS 6

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Apple’s much-maligned Maps app, released along with iOS 6, is an easy target, what with mixed up locations, cloud-obscured satellite images, and the infamous melting bridges. However, several developers have come forth to say that they had been warning Apple via reports on developer-only forums since the first beta came out at the beginning of June, 2012.

Some of these developers filed bug reports and sent e-mails to Apple employees as well, all about the poor performance of the upcoming Maps app in iOS 6.

“I posted at least one doomsayer rant after each (developer) beta, and I wasn’t alone,” one developer told CNET. “The mood amongst the developers seemed to be that the maps were so shockingly bad that reporting individual problems was futile. What was needed wasn’t so much an interface for reporting a single point as incorrect, but for selecting an entire region and saying ‘all of this — it’s wrong.'”

Of course, each of the developers who spoke to CNET on the condition of their anonymity have applications in the App Store that rely on Apple’s mapping technology, making the switch from Google data all the more impactful. They all say the issues were documented well, at least among developers who had access to the iOS 6 beta.

“During the beta period I filed bug reports with Apple’s Radar system (notorious for being ignored), posted on the forums several times, and e-mailed multiple people within Apple’s MapKit team to voice our concerns,” said another developer.

One developer reports that an Apple employee did, in fact, get back to them, and noted that the issue was “well understood,” reports CNET, though there was no further report on updating or fixing the Maps technology. Sadly, the low volume and specificity of communication stayed at this level throughout the month long beta process, according to the same developers.

“This has been a frustrating experience for us and we don’t care where the imagery comes from, we just would like our customers to be able to have the same experience within our app when they update from iOS 5 to iOS 6,” said the developer. “Instead, the OS upgrade broke some of the features we built within our application despite being told that only the imagery would be swapped out.”

Source: CNET
Via: MacDailyNews

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